Mammaries and memories

Recently the Daily Mail had 5 notable woman journalists write a letter to their own bodies. You'd think they'd have had more sense. Only one had anything pleasant to say to hers, so sounded somewhat smug. The others were hypercritical,the worst being Liz Jones,of course. She just extended her ever-present references to anorexia and self-loathing to one of those apologies that you just know isn't going to make any difference to the behaviour.
I was reminded of Victoria Wood's account of reading a magazine article encouraging her to look at herself naked and admire her positive features. She ended up repeating'You have Latin O'level' over and over again. I have Latin O'level too and three sisters-I have no need to look at mesel in the nip;I have been informed of my figure flaws years ago and the years must surely only have honed them. At any rate, there's nothing to be gained by pointing out your shortcomings;it bores or irritates people and makes them think about things they hadn't noticed. Particularly men, who are much much more tolerant than I was ever led to believe. It seems you need to be really quite deformed not to be fancied by several of them. That extremely reliable volume Heat magazine surveyed men's opinions of women's looks a couple of weeks ago. The majority disliked fake tan, hair extensions and breast implants but most excitingly, about of third of those surveyed didn't know what cellulite was. No-one must tell them, is that clear?
I might need to write a letter to my mother though,looking back at puberty.I may not have been as well-developped as Barbara Blaikie, who held bra-viewings in the toilets at breaktime in P.7 but I believe I was the last girl in my class in secondary school to get a bra. I wrote a whole diary about it, 1977-8. There was apparently nothing else important going on in my life, unless you count attempting to be promoted from the hockey Under-14 B's. In the end, I hung about for about two hours while me ma was ironing,finally blurting out a grunted demand for a 30AA. The longed-for item was white with fuchsia stars on it. We were always on about fuchsia in those days;I think because our houses were decorated almost entirely in brown.(It's not that long since my mum was forced to stop saying 'nigger brown', by the way.)This bra had hardly any elastic and therefore was deeply uncomfortable. Naturally I thought this was the reality and well worth the pain of going about like Judy Garland when they bandaged down her bosoms for The Wizard Of Oz.
I had friends with less innocent parents, who had Given Them A Book About The Facts Of Life,which I thought wonderfully enlightened, nearly bohemian, in fact. In those days you didn't say 'period' out loud. The attitude was similar to Homer Simpson's suspicious inquiry;'Is this some kinda underwear thing?' I told my mum stoutly that I knew 'everything' about sex,was believed, and turned to Graeme Cowden and his pilfered Ladybird book on Where we Came From, with the before- and after- puberty drawings in its inside covers. The rest I learned in time-honoured fashion by hearing jokes and pretending to get them, then doing 'research' with entirely unqualified people such as my best-friend-who-had-found-a-dirty-magazine-in-the-woods. Chesty Morgan was a long way from her 30 AA days, quite made you nostalgic for your vest.
I still am. Bras have turned out to be very over-rated. And we are all wearing the wrong size. This may be due to not remembering to do what the really posh bra-fitter ladies make you do, which is bend forwards and try to get your bosoms to fall into the cups as if someone was doing a Heimlich manuevre on you. Also no-one knows how to do that sum which tells you your cup size. Or it may be the hormonal hinterland we inhabit which leads you to spend more time deciding on a Twirl over a Lion Bar than you do on working out if you need a 'balcony' or a 'plunge'. Actually if it weren't for the chocolate, many of us might just plunge off the nearest balcony.

Miss Jean Brod-I?

I have never been what you could call popular but I must say I have enjoyed a small and colourful following, over the years. When I announced I was leaving my first teaching job in Kent, a little girl put her head in her hands and howled. She had never said one word to me the whole time in class but sent many postcards thereafter, trying to obtain a phone number. I doubt she was a lezzer, mind you, she's probably an octomom or some such by now, although being gay might be a help there. You would only have the energy to put on dungarees and maintain a crew cut.
I have to say I performed similar histrionics in sixth form,the result of a tremendous crush on our French Assistant,an exotic and bohemian individual with corkscrew curls and harem pants, whose name I can no longer remember.Imagine-when my grief at her departure moved Mr. Hooks to bring me to his office and be nice to me for several minutes. Not in a Notes On A Scandal way, you understand,just a slight twinkling over his bifocals. Pity my French teacher was so self-involved, he was known to have what he called 'snifters' of sherry in his office; I am sure that would have calmed me down nicely. The sangria I'd had at the French Assistant's party led to a prolonged lie down during the festivities in my extremely twee polka-dot top and Pedal Pushers. I'm surprised I wasn't taken for a Burlesque artist.
My most devoted follower,never to be rivalled, belonged to the er,less macho class of fella,along the lines of the ardent male fans of Cher or Barbra (but not Madonna as I think she is just a big millie and I intend to explain the syndrome at a later date). He was one of two boys in a small class whose favourite argument always centred around the Spice Girls,then at the height of their fame. My attempts to sweep through the door like one of the 'mistresses' in Mallory Towers would be ignored as Gareth again tried to convince Esther that Posh really could sing and had a lovely smile. Rank ordering the Spice Girls was their favourite pastime and Posh was always at the top for Gareth;he knew she was misunderstood.
Next best, he loved Coronation Street and enjoyed an encyclopaedic knowledge of its cast and characters, obtained from many happy hours watching old videos at his Granny's. In our Christmas Quiz, he was able to triumph as he was the only person in the entire school who knew stuff like Percy Sugden had died of a heart attack in the Snug of the Rover's Return in 1986.
This thirst for information was subverted somewhat as Gareth and Esther briefly embarked on a life of crime, nicking a couple of French Resource Packs, in a botched attempt to emulate me and my colleague, whom they greatly admired as linguists,as well as women,I think you'll find. The two of them were suspected then 'interviewed' by our then Head of Senior School, a gifted interrogator whose questioning techniques wouldn't have been out of place among the Borgias, had they tolerated poorly- suppressed laughter. Confession was reached; they'd had a baffling hoke through the worksheets, learned no new French,would you believe,panicked then dumped everything in a High Street bin, from which nothing was ever recovered. We laughed so much in the fog of smoke in the Maths Store,I can't remember if we made them pay for replacements. I do miss those days-we used to take the kids' fags and have them after school-you just had to reach into the top drawer of the filing cabinet for ten Embassy Regal.
Gareth wasn't a bad interrogator himself, as it transpired,as he found out a good deal about my family and my inclinations,so to speak. He learned names and committed habits to memory. All too evident when we were all on the boat to France. I woke up on the carpet of the ship's cafe-worn out ,caring for others,dontcha know, to find Gareth positioned faithfully at my feet like Greyfriar's Bobby. He then intoned;'Right, Mr Bell, she'll want the toilet then a coffee and after that, I'm taking her to that shop to get a present for wee Josh, ok? See you in twenty.'
I really should have married him.

School's in

You can't half tell it's back-to-school;I haven't posted a blog in weeks, it's really quite sunny and Waterloo Road is back with a new headteacher. That makes about six in three years-I blame their canteen. I was in our school canteen today trying to score a Rice Krispy square but no-there were dark mutterings about Healthy Eating and 'new guidelines'. In practice this means that our pupils, in the nutritional hinterland they inhabit,are having their sausage rolls for breakfast in the High Street and that there was no discernible sugar in the mealy little tile of shortbread I was forced to tackle. Totally not worth the calories, so into the grey bin it went, only to be summarily blended with the blue bin contents at the end of the day by the cleaners. Our environmental club; the 'Ecowarriors' are ill-equipped for battle against a tribe of ancient retainers armed with big Coronation Street hair, watered-down cleaning products and blue tabards. They mop quite vigorously in the hour or so after the kids have gone home as there are still plenty of teachers about to slip up. Then they repair to the toilets presumably to fling heavily diluted apple-scented bleach about with their eyes closed. No-one knows where these products can be obtained just as no-one recognises or would choose the colours used to paint school walls. Even the most enthusiastic Year 8 doesn't own a felt tip set big enough to include Smacked-Bottom Pink,Chewed Pencil-end Brown or Gob Green.

I think Bert and Alvin are 'in charge' of our cleaners but they are (a)scared and (b)having a prolonged celebration of Alvin's 60th so have been giddy since Monday. Alvin handed round a cake with a photo on it of himself in what appeared to be a saucy postcard-he was leering slightly in a sailor hat. Later that day I clearly heard Bert singing 'I'd like to teach the world to sing' with no regard for the irony of the sentiment when within earshot of the Geography department.He must have been on a sugar high. We don't allow such things among the punters;if one is caught twitching and tapping like something out of Girl, Interrupted after break,he gets his bag searched for 'Boost'. Water has caught on,finally, and is ostentatiously carried about the way celebrities do when photographed at Heathrow.They still spill it on their books all the time but they just dry out nice and hard and crinkly on the giant school radiators. No need to revisit the lurid stickiness of the Sukie Suncap era and you can make them carry on using their concertina exercise book, just for the craic.

The new first years are noticeably tiny yet encumbered with bags large enough to transport dead bodies, skirts which actually reach their knees and gender-specific hair styles. As they go up through the school, the bags and skirts get a lot smaller and the hair bigger and bigger;they start growing it around the time our parents' generation were sitting the Junior Certificate. By the time they reach sixth form the brushed-forward pompadour of their GCSE years has developped into a magnificent Axel Rose or Priscilla Presley in her wedding photos. Some have no bags or books at all and just trail about in a manky little cloud like Linus from Charlie Brown without his blanket. This is just the sort of individual who complains all the time about the smell of the place or its temperature. The latter is highly erratic and never suits anybody; artic in the staff toilets, tropical in the office- everyone is properly scared of the secretary. The former is,given the quantity of adolescent bodies at large in the place and the military junta of the fancifully named 'ancilliary staff', extraordinary.

Malaise Lyonnaise

This blog mightn't turn out, you know, like a cake. I am under packing pressure again and this time it's for a holiday 'in the province', so I have narrowed it down to taking half of the entire contents of the house. This is on account of all the weather we are having-lots of it and in the same day. We haven't got a climate any more, so in the space of an afternoon, you find yourself too cold, wet, too hot or being blown about. I feel this is probably akin to withdrawal from hard drugs or being abruptly catapulted into a fast track menopause.

It was the same on my teachers' course in Lyon a fortnight ago-I was roasted on all the transport but on arrival, it was so cold and rainy,I was forced to don the contents of my suitcase. I looked around indignantly and exclaimed loudly, confident in the knowledge that since I was in France, there was no point in concealing my disgust. The French don't bother to hide their feelings so I have given up. This is one of the main differences between us and foreigners, at least of the European variety; they lack our mania for being liked. They are just about civil with no smiling, if you are lucky; and NOT ONE BLOODY BIT NICE if you are not. I used to go about grinning maniacally at them with accompanying nodding and eyebrow raising. It never got me anywhere and they probably thought I was a Marcel Marceau fan, such was my animation compared to theirs.

We had the unspeakable art of the mime in one of our lessons-I still don't know how this could be used in teaching people to speak French but it was useful for getting me all riled up in time for being ignored in the cafes at lunchtime.

Real French food is most peculiar-there we were, degrees up to our eyeballs and we had to revise with each other in order to achieve a decent cup of coffee or a beer. These things become highly complicated with specialised vocabulary; 'un demi', 'une serieuse'-this is a pint;note the whiff of disapproval,for the coffee,'un creme'or 'un allonge' if you want more than a thimbleful. They are even keener on meat than we are, too. At one point we were taken to a place calling itself 'jardin du' something, which specialised in salads but I reckon the organisers were just messing with us. The dinner consisted principally of lettuce on a plate the size of a riot shield. This in a country whose attitude to vegetarianism is akin to that of Queen Victoria to lesbians; simply unable to process the idea of people wanting to get up to that sort of thing.

The French are mad about offal too and consistently try to pass off the sweepings from the abattoir floor as delicacies. Everywhere you go, there is 'andouille' which is made from pig's rectum, 'gesiers' -bird's windpipe, and a new one on me; 'tablier du sapeur' an organ the waitress tried to explain by indicating its position on her own body. Since she could have walked right on to the stage as the innkeeper's wife in Les Miserables without changing costume, we all had the chicken.

Thank God for the drink-they're very good at that and so were we. Hence I missed my flight, tired and emotional I believe it's called. Also I maintain time shifts uncontrollably in airports, one minute you're far too early and the next it's touch and go if they will let you on the plane because you appear to have passed two hours eyeing up the Chanel. All the employees I then had to deal with, each more beautiful and soignee than the last, remained impervious to sobs and stammers.'Ca va aller?', they kept asking. That was it. Here you'd have been taken home and made a toasted soda. No wonder all those rock stars get ushered about in first class by minders-means you can get away with being permanently drunk or hungover while circumnavigating the globe.

Speaking of which, French TV is so unbelievably dull and puerile that I switched it off and didn't hear about poor Amy for a day or two. Nobody chooses to be an addict and almost everyone has tried some kind of drug even if it amounts to a couple of drags of a B and H behind the bike sheds. Mind you clean and sober or off her head, the girl clearly had her own micro-climate; sleeveless through 8 pages of Google images-not a coat in sight, not even a cardigan. Much has been made of her individual style based on her love of 50's and 60's girl groups and so on. And what a tragically retro end it was. Alone ,in bed, like Marilyn Monroe, at the same age as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

It shouldn't happen to a teacher

I have been away and I'm about to go away again. This is necessary as;

a. it's always raining or looking like rain.

b. I will stop hanging around in a bathrobe until lunchtime, noticing the need to do lots of housework then not doing it because Sky gave me free movies and The Prince of Persia is on.

c. I have to wear some summer clothes before resigning myself to the annual Autumn palette of 'plum' and 'conker'.

I have just spent hours packing. The Daily Mail says this is normal for a woman, which was very helpful as I was feeling like some kind of luggage loser. The Daily Mail and I agree on a lot; it says people like the same M and S pants as I do, that JLo and Marc were clearly growing apart and that diets don't work but we still want to hear all about Dukan. You just have to steer clear of the actual news. I was at a very smart dinner party in London and found that my study of Femail was key to participating in the conversation. Everyone's at it behind their Financial Times, if you ask me.

Imagine my chagrin when I find within my daily Daily Mail an article promoting a teacher's 'heart-warming and hilarious' account of his post in a Primary School in the Yorkshire Dales. The fella's book is actually called All Teachers Great and Small, which I am sure James Herriot would have summat to say about over his 'bit o' dinner'. I did start to read the extracts but quickly started to skim as I do with stories about wee wees, nativity plays and joined-up handwriting. I am a shocking skimmer; I never read the childhood parts of biographies, I left out all the animal bits in Gerald Durrell and I skipped the entire Civil War in Gone With The Wind even though it's one of my favourites. Younger Sister says this is 'cheating' but I reckon I am not alone in this-how else would people have got through their claimed total of The 100 Greatest Books on Facebook? Skimming, that's how. Or spoofing, of course.

I can, however, assure you that our Yorkshire teacher's classroom was populated by eccentric but loveable and appreciative youngsters, who revered their leader in a delightfully salt-of the-northern-earth manner. Much like my experience in the Primary Sector at the start of Teacher Training; after a week of classroom observation, one child looked up at me-I thought, adoringly- and asked; 'Is that the only pair of earrings you've got?'

You will understand that things didn't get any prettier in the Secondary Schools and neither did I, judging by the comments.

'Miss(matter-of-fact tone), that eyeliner makes you look like 'Elvira, Mistress of the Dark' (No need to know Elvira to get the point)

'Miss,(scandalised delivery) you have got to let me use my straighteners in your store; when I woke up this morning , my hair was like yours!'

'Miss, (shaking head pityingly)that colour doesn't really suit you'

Clotheswise I grant you, it may have taken me a while to work out my LOOK. There was a long period of experimentation. I once rounded a playground corner in a floral wrapover, to meet a class of little girls all lined up and they simply fell about laughing. I can't think why. There was a pair of red suede loafers that I could never wear with anything other than all black(didn't want to look like Rod, Jane and Freddy, obviously) so there were shouts of 'Dorothy, Dorothy!' as I walked up the corridor. These were transferred to 'Robin, Robin!' in my unfortunate flirtation with green tartan culottes, mustard tights and ankle boots. It was the 90's, you know. I dressed older than I do now. There's no excuse for culottes though, really. Men were right. They made your bum look like a bungalow. Or a 'Temporary Hut' as they used to be called in schools.

Adding insult to injury, I was informed during the London dinner party that Colin Firth had been in the local school observing lessons, if you please. Perhaps it's just as well no such glamorous visitor would darken my classroom door. There would be no teaching to observe-just the distinct overtones of Joan Cusack in Working Girl when she sees Harrison Ford; ' Coffee? Tea? Me?' I'd be tripping over my culottes. Nearest we got to celebrity was having Rory McIlroy's girlfriend doing a Business A' Level and looking at him lately, I'm wishing she'd gone to the Tech and done hairdressing.

Waterloo Moments

On Wednesday I reached the threshold of my watershed with Waterloo Road. It's been long imminent. Amanda Burton plays the Headteacher this season. I once read an unforgettable comment in which her acting was described as always suggestive of her having a bad smell under her nose. Since she's been spending the greater part of any given school day pleading with some miscreant in the toilets, I haven't been able to concentrate on the plotlines at all, for looking up her nostrils. This is not important, luckily, as they appear to be rehashing 1980's slush pics. Sam, short for Sambuca, I kid you not, just expired of some sort of cancer-the attractive movie kind in which the sufferer merely looks peaky and downcast and is taken to a fairground exactly like your man in The Last Snows Of Spring. I well remember his mournful demeanour, while riding the dodgems, had me prostrate with grief in my teens at The Tonic cinema. I wonder did they call it The Tonic to suggest a film would cheer you up? Bloody lucky teenagers are so insenstive for the most part; all I can remember is The Exorcist, many Friday the 13ths and the likes of Who will love My Children? in which Ann-Margaret played a kind of terminally ill octomom. No wonder we were so ecstatic when Grease came out. We hadn't had a nice night out at the pictures since Saturday Night Fever.
I have faithfully followed Waterloo Road since the start and may have even claimed it was fairly realistic, unusual for someone in the business, so to speak. Older Sister,a nurse,was never able to contain herself for a full episode of ER, although I always thought that was purely because Clooney et al were far too nice and sympathetic to the patients. Anyway last week they wheeled on Margi Clarke (from Letter to Brehnez) to play mother of miscreant and I could see the beginning of the end. Margi is never anything other than common and Liverpudlian, even though Waterloo Road is vaguely set in Manchester. She just doesn't bother to do the accent; very like Anthony Hopkins and Liam Neeson, only those two have somehow got away with it. French and Saunders often used to spoof Liam Neeson 'Hoy noy broyn coy' (mind you, I think he had a bit of a go at Schindler) and Anthony Hopkins' speech is unidentifiable and identical in every part, but the pair of them are worth a fortune. Margi however, has only been on telly about twice since the 80's and one of those times was on Loose Women, which just about sums up her level of success, poor cow.
Robson Green plays the 'Site Manager' on Waterloo Road now. In real schools, this person is known as the Caretaker. Robson Green goes several steps further than Liam and Anthony; he is exactly the same character in every single role he plays. He also always gets the girl,which explains how he came to be sleeping with the Headteacher, when he could get her out of the girls' toilets. My credulity began to be stretched when Amanda decided he would make a great Classroom Assistant, and immediately organised lesson observation for him. I had several happy moments trying to picture a similar scenario in my own school. Our Bert released from his contented circumstances, and bunged into a classroom with the childer. No longer able to croon along to himself while 'patrolling the grounds' (having a fag outside), 'picking up litter' (on the phone to Elsie enquiring about his dinner) or 'liaising with staff'( either rowing with the secretary or sniggering over dirty jokes in the Science Store). He'd have his notice in within two days.
Anyway, on Wednesday last, Robson was crying, for God's sake. At that point I knew I had come to the end of the Waterloo Road. It is a well known fact that the Caretaker is the happiest and most powerful person in any school. They don't CRY. They have the biggest bunch of keys, they have very limited contact with pupils and when they do, they can come off with stuff usually frowned upon like 'Clear off' or 'I'll have you!' and if they feel like a day off , they can just fiddle with the heating. Great job.
I recently attended my second school reunion dinner with entertainment provided by a locally born and bred successful musician. He definitively proved to me that you cannot carry off dreadlocks and eyeliner at 40 unless you are Bob Marley. Hair is key in these affairs. If you are a man, do you still have any? If you are a woman, are you still using henna/wearing a hairband/cutting your own fringe? Sadly, yes was the answer to these questions as I looked round the room. You keep catching people eyeing you right back and you just know they are checking to see if you have let yourself go. You are painfully aware of this in advance and have submitted to hairdressers, beauticians and the 'Control' section of Marks and Spencers' underwear department. This means you sit bolt upright all night like Mary Poppins and you are unable to get up and talk to your former teachers, in case the poppers in the undercarriage of your 1980's style 'body' actually do pop and your flesh bursts out onto Mr Tregenna's lap. This is fine as you know you will be unable to be anything other than slighly fawning and quite unable to address him by his first name. I am only sorry that our former caretaker wasn't present. He would have been one of the best dressed people there in his navy jumpsuit and he'd most certainly have known where to hide during the speeches.

Wot-er fab elephant

Well the beast is the best thing in Water For Elephants, by far. And I don't know why 'water' is in the title ;all they gave the thing to drink was Moonshine or some such, as 'twas set during the Prohibition era. This didn't stop anyone from getting right and pissed, including the elephant, on account of its cruel treatment at the hands of the Circus Ringmaster. Yes, it was that corny-so bad it was good.

Reese Witherspoon seems to have lost weight for nancying about on horses, in a series of revealing leotards. So she was basically just a chin on wee legs. I have always had difficulty with The Chin. It was the same with Meg Ryan. Some days, it was all I could think about. Anyway, you never quite know where to look during this type of performance-it's the same on Britain's Got Talent, when there's some sword-swallowing bint doing her stuff. You're not looking at her act; you're trying to work out out if she's had a Brazilian or a Holywood. And you very often can.

Reese was married to the Ringmaster and in spite of their struggle to make ends meet in the Circus, and the fact that alcohol was banned; they were able to rock about nightly, in evening dress, swigging Champagne. There were stacks of performers and animal trainers and the like, holed up in windowless carriages on the Circus train, but the only person they ever invited to dinner was Robert Pattinson, leading to a lerve triangle the audience was clearly meant to care about. Truthfully, any more than ten minutes of screen time without the elephant had me chewing fretfully on my Magnum stick. I insist on Magnums in the cinema-at least they are quiet, if you can stifle the orgasmic moans. Trouble is the marve thick chocolate drops off and you emerge from the Omniplex, without realising you have great big smears all over your face and crotch, like a mud-wrestling toddler.

Robert managed to get himself a couple of mates halfway through; a cantankerous dwarf and an irascible elderly alco, each of whom were of extremely limited use, both in the circus and to the plot. Small wonder they got chucked off the train at high speed, an hour and a half in. Robert had been abruptly orphaned earlier-he wasn't the luckiest of fellas. Not that you could tell by his utterly bland countenance-he wasn't making much of a fist of breaking out of the whole vampire business, for my money. Takes a bit more than a bit of blusher and no fangs, like. He really only managed a couple of facial expressions; reminded me of that Dorothy Parker review of one of Katherine Hepburn's performances: 'She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B'. However I am fairly sure that that he and The Chin walked off into the footlights. Once I knew they'd rescued and cared for the elephant, I lost all interest in the outcome.

That animal should win an Oscar. I mean, it will have to become bulimic and slim down to, say, the proportions of Marlon Brando in his latter years. And it'll not be able to drink the way it's been used to unless it wants to go to rehab, for the Betty Ford 12-step program I believe all actors must undertake at some point. These privations would be well worth it to sit between Jack Nicholson and Barbra while trying to get a good look down Jennifer Hudson's cleavage and pretending to cheer on the competition. If only they allowed Magnums, I 'd jump at the chance.

Holier than I

I rang my mum recently, having just returned from a trip and she quite inconsequentially exclaimed; 'I wish yis would go to church' (she meant me and two of my sisters, she addresses her disapproving remarks globally). 'You know, if anything happened to you, it would be awful for me.' Never mind how it might be for me, suddenly killed off, in the prime of life, you might say. She was fixating on how terrible it would be for her, if I could not be pictured sailing off into what has been known in my family, since our granny's funeral, as 'the Heavenly Harbour'. On that occasion the minister had a whole nautical theme goin' on-unexpectedly this was rather comforting. My mum's generation thinks that attending church regularly is non-negotiable, if you want to anchor your vessel at the port of Jesus and eternally, er, trim your sails in the celestial hereafter. She has no truck with my claims to an intimate knowledge of Paradise Lost and a spot of spiritual contemplation while looking out of the windows of Spinster Cottages. It's a bit irksome for her too that best friend, The Brick, has her entire extended family in attendance every single week-not that The Brick is lording it over her(pun intended). The upshot was that I and an equally wayward sister were invited to a church lunch today, preceded by Morning Service.

I half expected a regal fanfare as I walked down the aisle-it has been some time, after all. However, the surroundings and many of the faces were mostly unchanged-the older generation's hair colour was 'not what God intended', which I believe is a quotation from Gone With The Wind, but this came in very handy when it came to recognising an octogenarian still sporting the flame-red hair from my recollections. There the familiarities from my youth ended. Not a hymn was to be had, for starters. The music was extraordinary-a good fifteen minutes of tuneless droning started us off, with repetitive and vulgar lyrics; 'Our God is awesome' and the like, which inexplicably sent several members of the congregation into some sort of religious ecstasy. There was eye-closing, arm-raising and at one point, I kid you not, a blue flag was waved about in the manner of Olga Korbut in the 'floor section' of the gymnastics. Then there was a puppet show, aimed at the many hyperactive children present. They enjoyed this so thoroughly that several ran up towards the pulpit, squealing, and attempted to participate before being rugby-tackled by their parents. This livened it up for me no end, I can tell you.

Then, before I could do any more sotto voce muttering about Ritalin dosage, they were treated to a terrifying monologue about Christ dying on the cross out of love for them, then packed off to Sunday School. I can only hope they were forced to quietly colour-in a comforting tableau of, I don't know, some tombs or crowns of thorns, perhaps. Speaking of youth, at this point, I became distracted by an utterly gorgeous bloke two rows up-he may have been 20 or so, I couldn't take my eyes off him-it was all very Thornbirds. Highly inappropriate, but it took my mind off the powerpoint presentation on Cleft Palates in Peru, to which we were being treated, at the time.

Next came the sermon, which was reassuringly similar to those of my younger days, that is, fairly baffling, awfully clever(good bit of business about St. Paul and the Ephesians) and still trying to pull off that blend of kindly friendliness and horrifying 'fire and brimstone' you get at most weddings and funerals in God's own country. This was topped off by another ten-minute song featuring three chords tops, two verses of ghastly over-simple lyrics and some high-pitched wailing, clearly thought to be enhancing harmony. I can't think what God would make of it, as He steers us from his lonely helm.

Tell you what, though, the lunch was tremendous-Presbyterians really know how to cater. I might book them for my next big birthday. And I've told me ma, when I buck up my ideas and become a proper churchgoer, I shall be madly traditionalist;I want proper hymns, bible readings and children being seen-and-not-heard. I realise this may mean submitting an application for a sanctified extension to Spinster Cottages. I wonder if that handsome young guy might want to join my congregation-would kill two birds...

The style up the aisle

I am wedding-obsessed, I hear you cry. Certainly between me, me ma and Older Sister, there was a near encyclopaedic knowledge of royalty. And couture. My mum asked things like; 'Who's that in the navy shot silk behind Princess Alexandra?' To which the reply came; 'Either Marina Ogilvy or Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. Lovely bit of Bruce Oldfield.' You would think we were fervent monarchists. No, we're just really nosey. Years of careful study of Hello! are also a key qualification to get into our Royal Wedding parties. One or two key volumes by Gyles Brandreth must be digested. You can't just turn up with a Fondant Fancy matching the Queen's hat, you know.

We laughed uproariously at the Royal Family's transportation in those mini coaches-looked like they were being transferred from Protective Custody. Why would you not go about in carriages if you had the chance? Bit like brides not wearing a veil-crazy to ditch something so flattering. I'm just wondering if I could get away with one in work. This leads me to the subject of the attire of the day. I must start, of course, with the stars of the show.

The Beckhams

He's just plain gorgeous and everyone likes him-matters not a jot if he has loads of tatts and wears his medal on the wrong side on the wrong occasion. The man would look good in an Easyjet uniform, my idea of Europe's most unflattering outfit.

Victoria looked pinched and miserable-and that was just her feet in those grotesque shoes. She was in a navy tent of her own design. Well, she can't draw-this is why all her dresses look like something you would have seen in a Fuzzy Felt box, back in the day. Horrid angular shapes in block colours. The make up was like a mask and the hat-terrifying. I preferred her tacky in the WAG days-now that she's all 'fashion', I'm getting a pain.

Kate

Not loving a wedding dress is akin to not saying someone's new baby is beautiful or at least, cute. I'm going to say it anyway-didn't like it much. Too timeless, too classic, too structured-with those heavy eyebrows and the flat veil and slightly apologetic tiara, the whole effect was very Disney princess. The pair of them looked just like wedding cake figurines, which will go down very well with the tourists I imagine. Now that they're Duke and Duchess, it's as if they've suddenly aged ten years and their evening and going away outfits bear this out-very Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Tara Palmer-Tomkinson

Older sister summed it up perfectly when she confessed it put her in mind of a Batman villainess-a variation on Poison Ivy in violent royal blue. Took your mind off the nose, though.

Santa, her sister, was dressed fabulously, I thought-the hat was perfect for a wedding, opulent but frivolous.

Beatrice and Eugenie.

Sorry, Lady Gaga and Dolly Parton. They looked unhinged. Beatrice's hat was similar to the symbol used by Prince when he gave up being called Prince. My mum has found out that Philip Treacy was up most of the night three nights running and Beatrice's headpiece is the result of his being 'not well'. Hard to argue.

Samantha Cameron

Girlish figure does not indicate girlishly dressed and coiffed. This was not an occasion in which to be caught underdone, with a barrette in the side of your head like a second former and sweatily clutching a mismatched pashmina like a paper bag. There was far too much hair down in general, for my liking. I blame The Only Way is Essex.

Miriam Clegg

Dame Edna meets Carmen Miranda over a visible panty line. Get a grip. Actually, get gripper knickers.

Princess Anne

Remember in Gone With the Wind when Scarlett had to make the dress out of the drawing room curtains? I mean, I know she's 'thrifty' and all but we're between wars.

Carole

Vay nice. The evening dress was even better; midnight blue pleated tiers, gorgeous. So thin, my niece and I were pondering whether the camera still adds ten pounds in the HD age.

Camilla

Also rather lovely, I thought. Not as good as her own wedding outfits though. Needs a haircut; she's starting to look even more like a Terrier.

The Spencer girls

Who cares what they wore? They are so beautiful. Mind you, Lady Kitty was bursting out of her Victoria Beckham buff-coloured Lego dress or whatever the hell it was.

The Queen

Who cares what she wore? It's the Queen. We're just lucky we haven't had to look at that Pekinese, Wallis Simpson, for the last fifty odd years.

A quick word about the hoi pollo-I

Bad enough we have to be shown all the street parties and flag- waving, mask-wearing proles half the day on Friday-I am just not interested in the antics of ordinary people I don't know. Fearne et al had the divil's own job getting anything noteworthy from their very many interviews in The Mall. The cartwheeling vicar is a rare exception; the guy has spirit and some talent, at least.

Media coverage now is punctuated with commentary through Twitter , email etc. from any old chuffer ; 'Doesn't Beckham look fab, all clean (sic) up?' at the bottom of our screens. What is it with this mania for the ordinary, uninitiated person and their reactions and remarks IN THE MIDDLE OF A GLOBAL EVENT. You are trying to have a moment of pure escapism, only to be interrupted by the musings of some telesales executive from Tooting. Unspeakably annoying.

Far better the path taken by my Aunts. They stayed indoors, keeping their comments to each other, occasionally fluttering a union Jack napkin and admiring themselves in their replica Kate/Diana engagement rings, especially sent for.

Wedding Iron-I

It's almost impossible not to love a wedding, if you are a woman. Unless you saw the pictures of Liza Minnelli and David Gest, that is. Did you not think it most unreasonable of the Norn Iron men to complain and moan as they did? Some wouldn't even have it on in the house. They must be firmly told that this sort of event is sport for women and they're lucky it doesn't go on for four weeks, like the World Cup or the Olympics. The main sport for me was in the clothes (on which I plan a whole separate outpouring, never fear) and the lip reading, in which my status is merely amateur. I was able to 'do' William at the altar a bit 'You look lovely, beautiful' and Kate looking up at the Royal wastitsname air force ; 'Pehfect Fohmaytion' ( I suspect elocution lessons), much to the amusement of my company. Thank god for Sky News-their guy got every 'Ok, ya'.

How come every bride's dress is so top secret and mustn't be known about for fear of imitation? Some people won't even tell you the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses. They will be dealt with when I am in charge. Colours are no-one's exclusive domain. Yet after every Royal Wedding, there is a huge rush to make copies of the dress. Is the desire for originality eclipsed by the regal endorsement? Who are these people who would wear a copy of Kate's dress and why don't I know any of them? They are probably the sort who send gifts to the royal family and do not realise these will be immediately donated to charity, as the family admire the latest Faberge egg, bestowed by the Sultan of Brunei or someone.

I was at the gym yesterday and the teacher announced that she had only one comment re the wedding, which was that she felt sure that Kate Middleton does Bodypump; 'Those arms!' Gym people always try to credit attractiveness of all kinds to working out. Kate is simply extremely lean. If she lifted weights, she'd have Madonna arms, bulging biceps and popping veins-wouldn't have 'done' at all with that lace. How ironic that she has been made a duchess-wasn't it the Duchess of Windsor (also a 'commoner') to whom the adage 'You can never be too thin or too rich' is attributed? Kate now has both attributes, regardless of how long they are going to be holed up in Anglesey with no servants. Mad. Ask any married woman, a servant would be the first thing they would get if they could, before jewellery, even. For now, however, what else is there for Kate to do over there, apart from the Hoovering? I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a baby on the way very soon. You need a good excuse to get out of unveiling statues and breaking bottles on bits of boat.

I thought her the perfect storybook bride-beautiful, demure, bland and poised. Only the white knuckle grip on her father's hand betrayed what must have been intense fright. Mike might have to use the other mitt for a while for making up his party bags.

I was all agog to see Prince Albert of Monaco-that royal family being far and away my favourite for beauty, glamour and scandal. I mean Princess Stephanie actually ran away with the circus fahcrissake! First the trapeze artist then the ringmaster. And that was after having out-of-wedlock children with her bodyguard and calling them things like Pauline. Now Albert, between his two siblings, most resembles his mother, Grace Kelly and like her, seems to have taken on a rather bovine appearance in middle age. He looked squat and bloated. How badly has that family aged, given their genes? Princess Caroline is not 'wearin' well', as my mother would say and all the fags, sunbathing and mucking out elephants has caught up with Stephanie something shocking. Ironically, the British royal family looked fantastic. They have all been on the Slimfast and have become positively coltish and sexy. I do not include Beatrice and Eugenie here and I will be discussing those two later (menacing tone intended). If not careful, the Windsors can take on a distinctly bloodhound appearance-you can even see the odd whisper of it in William at certain angles. But on Friday, they looked great, even the Queen at 85, if only she would crack that smile more often. 'Dry as boke' at times, another of me ma's baffling yet apt expressions.

William, I am happy to report, has inherited all of his mother's warmth and charisma but another irony, were you not really looking at Harry, when you could? How much fun does he seem? You just know you'd have a great night out with him-there he was piled into the bus at 3am with half his shirt buttons undone, off to an after-party at the Goring. I bet he likes curried chips along with blowsy wee girls with tons of sex appeal like that Chelsy. I love how you can impart so much by putting 'that' before anyone's name. Grazia says Chelsy's not having it- couldn't stick the royal way of life. Perhaps that's why she was about 2 miles down the church behind one of those stupid trees and forced to show up at 9am with the unimportant people. No wonder she looked a bit rough. Knackered I'd say. Up all night, rakin' about with Harry, lucky bitch.

Just because the sun has got his hat on..

Suddenly we find ourselves plunged into a heatwave. People are going about in open-topped cars looking, as they always do, unbearably smug. And why must they drive so slowly? Clearly showing off.

There's showing off of other things too. Legs and feet wholly unprepared for warm weather. People have produced their summer collection and started wearing it, as if it were August. Long, white skirts to work, skimpy little tops and last year's sandals, revealing prehistoric toenails. Honestly, you can't look down when you're queueing in Tesco. I don't get caught on the hop like this as I follow my parents' tradition of Getting The Clothes Down From The Loft. This process takes several days and ends in a trip to The British Heart Foundation, with bags full of stuff you bought on holiday, all carried away with yourself in the heat. I was overcome with disappointment at my loft's contents and went straight 'down the high street' avoiding Giveusoneofyourkidneys or whatever you call them (they seem to have had bother coming up with a catchy name) since they snubbed me when I tried to give them a sofa. Oh yes, there was much teeth-sucking and head-shaking because one of the arms was faded. Nerve.

You then try to shop but you can't, as all that is available is straight-up holiday clothing, sarongs and whatnot, or the garbage they try to peddle every spring. This includes 'Nautical'-red, blue and white with stripes, brass buttons and sometimes even an anchor motif. Makes me think of Edwina Currie on a boating trip and I do feel this look is favoured by that sort of woman. There may also be 'military-' or 'utility-wear'. This means the sort of washed-out drabness you might have seen worn by the workers in some sort of 20th century Communist drama. Terrible sludge colours-nothing to look at in the queue at the butcher's. By contrast 'Spring florals' will also be widely available, often featuring Peter Pan collars or tiers of frills, so that grown women can go about like little peasant girls. Or gypsies, as they used to be imagined by me before I found out from the telly that they like to wear very tight, dayglo nylon as often as possible. Lucky they don't light fires any more too; you wouldn't want to stand near a naked flame in that get-up.

The Irish can't really do summer dressing-we just can't cope. We haven't had the practice, so on the rare occasions when the sun puts his hat on here, we will just put any old thing on too. Doesn't matter if your skin is pale blue, wheel out the denim cut -offs (with pocket linings visible) a boob tube and your gladiators and walk about all day without sunscreen, until you have turned the colour usually seen in advanced stages of scarlet fever.

Grazia tells me that Tom Ford says men should only wear shorts for sport or on the beach and I agree completely. There were some quite extraordinary sights this weekend. Hefty boys in cropped combats, par exemple. Rolled up tracksuit bottoms with socks and trainers but no top on. A man of advanced years wearing what my sister calls 'rude shorts'- the small, silky ones that curve up at the side of the thigh. You can really only pull them off if you are a Kenyan Marathon runner. And what is with bald men putting sunglasses on their heads? Revolting. Won't be allowed when I'm in charge.

I won a tiny little bit on the Grand National. I don't know how this happened as the terminology and mathematics of it all are beyond me. I will never be addicted to gambling, on account of the sums. I also come over all silly when I make my annual visit to the Bookmaker's-it feels all very demi-monde. Consequently, I planned a roguish demeanour to conceal the fact that I don't really understand what 'each way' means and if I'd been handed 25p on my £6 bet, I'd have been quite pleased. Unfortunately, I ended up sounding a lot like Margo Ledbetter ;'I believe I have winnings', I intoned loftily, 'my good man' was understood, if not actually uttered. The bookie winced slightly and gave me £9. I have no idea why. The atmosphere was oddly depressing-perhaps there was some impact from the poor dead horses. I wonder how long it will be before the Grand National is done away with, at least as we know it now. Bearing that in mind, perhaps I will get a green visor now and wear it out and about in the sunshine.

That's why the old lady is a tramp

My mum was filling in her census form the other night and her pen ran out. She pronounced this ironic and meaningful, given her relatively advanced years. She's been known to be darkly triumphant about this. When she sees something on telly she doesn't approve of, she remarks stoutly; 'Well, I'm just glad I'm going to die soon and don't have to put up much longer with that woman's suggestive voice in the Marks and Spencer food ad'. As a wind-up, my sisters and I have taken to asking each other if we are having 'sexy chicken' for dinner, in front of her.

She has had great funeral plans in place too for some time now, which we have all talked over, with that gallows humour that naturally accompanies the thought of such an event. We cannot all allow ourselves the Elizabeth Taylor grandeur of making everyone wait 15 minutes for the guest of honour to make a final appearance. Even a show-off like I has only got as far as insisting that my least demonstrative sister sings 'You were the Wind Beneath My Wings' at my own funeral. This should ensure tears and gulping, I am unconcerned as to their true source.

I have, however, long been interested in plans for myself as an old lady. The hair has been a preoccupation for some time now, as you have to have a proper style and it can't be too long -just look at Jerry Hall these days. She is going to look homeless when she hits 70, with that great swathe over one shoulder. I could have a bun but, as I am not Margot Fonteyn, would risk that Anthony-Perkins-in-Psycho effect. I definitely can't pull off a Judi Dench and I don't want to pull off an 'ambassador's wife' blow dry, so it will have to be a bob. Oh god, I will be running about like French and Saunders when they were doing those ancient, posh 'stuff and nonsense' women.

Mind you that might go along nicely with the old lady personality I am working out. I will probably make the transition from intimidatingly outspoken to positively waspish. Difficult though it may be to believe, I do actually restrain myself at times. When I am old, however, I will have the time and the licence to go up and down the high street with a rubber, erasing all the apostrophes on the signs outside the fruit shops: 'orange's', 'leek's and worst; 'peache's'. I will be able to bellow , when confronted by a waitress with a nose-ring; 'Excuse me, am I at a Rodeo?' I will tell my local restaurant why they cannot have 'Chicken Coq au Vin' on their menu and make them explain how they came up with 'Kerr Royale' as a cocktail. Is it champagne with Irish whiskey? I might try that later in life. It would certainly take the edge off when I am at the cinema with people using their mobiles and digging into a skip of popcorn throughout the film. I will demand that the music in shops be turned off and refuse to put back stuff I have tried on. Ok, I did that once already when asked if I would mind leaving the clothes back where I'd got them. I replied equably; 'No. I don't work here.' I've never had the nerve since.

You may be astounded to learn that I have , in fact, rejected the notion of becoming a millie old lady. There's one in my gym I've been observing. She chews gum all through Body Balance and has a fag in the car park after. For one thing, I'm not going to exercise classes when I am old. I plan on seizing up. I'd much rather be pushed about in a wheelchair in a fur coat and diamonds. Maybe a turban. Very Liz Taylor.

It's not easy being green. Or orange.

I made the mistake of being in the centre of Belfast on St. Patrick's day. I thought I had finally stumbled upon a riot, having avoided one throughout The Troubles, but it was a vast number of teenagers celebrating, after a fashion. Now I know why we try to bus as many as possible off to the Schools' Cup Final. I am, of course, used to large quantities of disagreeable adolescents but for normal people, Hitler Youth would have been less intimidating. They were gathered in pockets, breaking bottles, screaming at each other, gesturing obscenely or carrying each other about. It was like Lord Of The Flies.

A couple of policemen could be seen loitering in a shop doorway. They seemed to think I was jesting when I suggested they waste no more time before donning riot shields and getting the giant hoses out. This would have been useful, both in scattering the crowd and washing off the offensively copious fake tan on display. Most of the girls were wearing shorts and their legs were every shade of matt wood varnish from Antique Pine to Deep Walnut. Finished off with those funny little light canvas shoes we used to call 'indoor gutties' in my Primary School. And the hair; parted above one ear like Bobby Charlton's, arranged across foreheads in a great sweep then mussed up like the Hunger Strikers in their,er, heyday. Black seems to be the favoured hair colour and with the tans, the enormous eyelashes and the thick foundation; you felt that you might have come across the aftermath of some sort of transvestites' 'Homage to Pocahontas' carnival.

The boys looked as bemused, uncertain or uninterested as they have ever looked, but with magnificently maintained curly bobs or marvellously brushed forward layers. This creates a peculiar effect-a bit like Margaret Thatcher or Carol Channing on a skateboard, sporting an extremely low-hanging jeans' gusset.

Speaking of which, our local cross-dresser has taken to frequenting my village. He used to favour Marks and Spencers but today he stole my parking space outside Boots. He has very elaborate outfits, think 'village fete circa 1956' but remains a most unconvincing woman. I mean, he makes Les Dawson in drag seem fragrant and ladylike. Must be a very lonely, em, calling; he never has anyone with him. I wonder if he likes cappuccinos as I am thinking of befriending him. He can come with me next St. Patrick's day on a lovely bus tour I have heard about, involving the super smashing history and culture of Downpatrick with scones and Irish Stew. Just the thing for refined ladies of a certain age- and uncertain religious affiliation.

Qualit-I not quantit-I

I hear that the best way to blog success is to 'update' every day. Oh dear. I see I am going to have to buck up my ideas. Or 'idears', as I am always hearing people say, as well as 'Chicargo'. I am baffled by this. I was at a clothes party thing a while back and the woman hosting it kept talking about 'kharki'. I grew up with a girl whose mother had her own version of this foible; she would lean out of the car window on long journeys and shout; 'It's not far nar!' Or having cleaned the bathroom, in heels, I might add, would forbid entry thus: You're not having a shower nar!'

I see I have digressed, as I do. I had a boyfriend who referred to it as 'Ronnie Corbetting'. Do you remember that part of The Two Ronnies no-one liked, when Ronnie C sat in the green stripey chair, tout miniscule, and told a rambling story with many tangents? He was the only person who found it funny, how his tiny shoulders would shake. I used to think it was a good test of character if you hated that part of the show; in the same way, I am not confident about getting on with people who would wear Britney Spears' perfume or appreciate the sound of bagpipes.

So, back to the point, much as one loves the sound of one's own voice, could one blog daily? I'm reminded of early episodes of Friends, when Joey moved out of the apartment with Chandler to be alone with his thoughts and later remarked ;'Turns out, I don't have that many thoughts'. Now, I may have many a feverish scribbling in a floral notebook but, having my generation's respect for the written word, I wouldn't publish them in their undercooked state. Speaking of which, it appears I could update daily re Fifteens; there was more talk of them at the weekend. Seemingly I misunderstood the 'recipe', it all seemed to turn on fifteen cherries and fifteen marshmallows etc. That is, a formula so moronic, it must have been developped as part of an Occupational Therapy programme. I could also complain online every time I go to the gym. Last night's Zumba class featured several individuals clad in headbands, cropped leggings and legwarmers. You needn't bother picturing Olivia in her Let's Get Physical heyday; think Acorn Antiques when it briefly became a leisure centre and the cast wore leotards like sausage casings.

Of course, I shouldn't concern myself, you can put any old thing online these days. Take my trawlings-if you type in a query, you may well be directed to some sort of dubious exchange between the uninitiated, on whatever the subject might be, in semi-evolved literacy skills. These types are fond of a good scrap; 'Your (sic) wrong, Gaga say's (sic) what we wanna(sic) here(sic)' Ok, I made that up, based on what I have seen on less interesting subjects. I would never do any sort of Gaga research, the very sight of her makes me grind my teeth. I had to wear a gumshield to watch the Grammys.

My search on Youtube ,for extracts of the West End musical Wicked ,turned out to be very illuminating, but not in a good way. Some fella had filmed it apparently during a bout of delirium tremens and failed to notice he was focused (when he was in focus) on the back of a girl's head for a large part of the opening. He wasn't shy about having a good clap with device in hand either or perhaps he fell over, either way, motion sickness immediately set in for me. Some entries turned out to be two or three still photographs, with a song simply selected from the soundtrack and played over the top. My favourite, though, purported to be a proper clip but turned out to be a bloke singing 'Defying Gravity' quite tunelessly, to a sort of karaoke version of the accompanying music. He was somewhat under-rehearsed and since he could be seen at the end with a towel turban on his head,giggling, I felt he had made insufficient effort with his costume.

Gwyneth Paltrow is taking over the net too. She has her own profoudly annoying website called Goop, in which she tries to be what Americans call 'relatable' by sharing her experiences trying on Oscar dresses and trying to drop a few pounds by eating locally-produced, organic, macrobiotic, vegan..I don't know..dust? Should really cheer up those of us with freezers full of food purchased after a long lurk at the reduced-for-sale-today cabinet. Next thing, Gwynnie is photographed extensively on holiday, in several bikinis without any kind of what real women call 'support'. Now she is singing. On Glee, at the Grammys and at the Oscars. I cannot wait for her next film, Country Strong, in which I believe she plays a 'washed-up', alcoholic singer, looking for all the world as glowing as the Timotei girl. She can hold a tune alright but actually has an unpleasant nasal voice-I have listened closely on Youtube. I do not see why she cannot stick to what she is good at-acting. But let's face it, she will probably be bringing out a 'fragrance' any minute.

So I am away to record myself, having a crack at a bit of Adele in the bath. She calls her albums after her current age. So I will put it online under the title '46 ' and see how it goes down. I expect many 'hits', electronically or,you know, by cars.

On Fifteens and Fitness

Yis have all been very touchy about the fifteen. It has aroused more annoyance than anything else I have written so far. People keep tackling me about it, looking wounded. It really must be a national treasure. We are all very attached to the tray bake-even men who insist on doing things women don't understand, like putting chocolate in the fridge and liking kebabs. I was out walking with a good cross section of males the other day and you should have seen them falling upon the Malteser Squares and Millionaire's Shortbread during the coffee break, it was like the Women's Institute with P.M.T.

We were on the Lagan towpath and it was jam packed, let me tell you, with rowers, cyclists, canoeists and runners. The runners were extremely cheeky, coming up behind a person and saying things like 'Pick a side' rather than 'Excuse me'. I felt like retorting 'Pick the stones out of yer bake when I knock you to the ground' but I was trying to impress my new walking friends by pretending to be tolerant. I don't hold with running and not purely because the beauticians tell me pityingly that I have 'high colour'. Runners always look strained, wrinkled and miserable; a combination of the horrid exertion of it all and having had to dress themselves in those unspeakably unflattering skintight leggings with the lizardy markings. And do not get me started on wetsuits. Women were standing about having chats, quite unconcerned at having donned some rubber tubing, which contrives to squash your bosoms and yet bag in a triangular manner at the crotch so you look like Sindy without her pants.

May I also add that I took my business elsewhere as it were, from Spin Class at my gym purely because of the cycling shorts, the whooping that went on when people hit their endorphin high and the impish little man-lady who kept insisting that we each could be 'Number One'. That figure only interests me if it indicates my position in a queue to get Lancome samples. So I repaired to something called Zumba; oversubscribed Caribbean dancing,which leads participants to become all overcome by their own sexiness and actually high-five each other at the end of each track. Some nights, it's all I can do not to pretend I don't recognise high-fiveing and just smack people. I'm extremely popular at the gym, I am sure you can imagine.



My mother has just been round, complaining about having been set upon by The Brick's daughter's dog , which she described as wrinkly and 'all the one colour' which is a terrible affliction in her book. (She says Charles Dance is 'all the one colour' -skin, hair, eyes and sadly I can see what she means. The dog's colour in this case turned out to be 'taupe', she pronounced indignantly, then it was clear to me she was referring to a Wiemaraner, which cheered up my monday. It's always worth dwelling on some of her unique opinions when one is in need of a good laugh. She suspects that Michael J. Fox and Jodie Foster are the same person ; 'You never see them together,' she mutters, darkly. She said the same about Michael and LaToya Jackson and I was worryingly close to believing this until LaToya made that unmistakeable appearance at Michael's funeral in her, er, Fedora. When Mum wants to indicate Kate Winslet, she goes; 'You know that mouth I hate?' and she still thinks it was an awful pity about Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift.



I will be as close to a Fifteen this weekend as I ever intend to get by having lunch at Jamie Oliver's similarly named restaurant as it was no doubt called after thon bun -a closely guarded secret until now. Or is it that fifteen reformed hallions cook yer tea? I will report.

Crimes de cuisine

I was watching an old episode of Nigella Bites last night. I love these because of the house and the way she talks. It's also fascinating to see how she cooks in a denim jacket with her hair hanging down. No-one else would do this. At least the hair was clean-I had to give up Nigel Slater as his grooming is wanting, in that pervert kinda way. Now, Nigella almost brought me round to the idea of jelly (which I am agin) as hers was such a lovely pink and had fizzy wine in it. She spoiled it all though, by serving it with pouring cream. War crime. It makes all desserts freezing and soggy. Would you pour a glass of wine on your roast dinner? I thought not. You must whip the cream, in my book, I don't care if you are saving on dishes. There's just no point otherwise. Several other enraging culinary features very quickly occurred:



1. Frisee lettuce. It's bitter, unattractively pointy and scratchy-gets caught in the back of your throat. Should be called 'sore salad'.



2. Herbal tea. One is always trying to embrace it but it is impossible to ignore the overtones of bathroom. That is, whatever it says on the packet, it always tastes like hot toothpaste or tepid bath water. Take your pick.



3. Offal. Of any description. Men regard eating it as a test of virility, it appears. Why else would a person ingest what has been scraped off the abbattoir floor? I had a Home Economics teacher, whose catchphrase was 'Offal's not awful'. Oh, but it is.



4. Mealy powder from packets to which water must be added; soups, sauces and of course Potnoodles. One is not an astronaut. I have a pupil who is unable to accept that Potnoodles do not exist in France and thus he may not just write it down on his 'mon menu' worksheet next to 'un fry'.



5. Speaking of pupils-what is the deal with Haribo? Bits of coloured tyre. Known in our house as A.P.R (aul plasticky rubbish), a term I felt sure I had invented, until I had to reread Cal for teaching and found I had lifted it straight out and adopted it. Two of my sisters apply it to anything considered tacky or inferior , as in 'Don't you buy those APR curtains just 'cos they were in the sale.'



6. Things that my mother thinks are 'tasty'; broth, stew, gammon, corned beef, items fried in lard. I can only attribute these tastes to a post-war childhood,overshadowed by the horror of the powdered egg.



7. Fifteens. Those of you not from Norn Iron may not know these. I strongly suspect they are unobtainable elsewhere. They could be our national dish or national 'traybake' at least, were they actually baked . Unbelievably, they are abominable confections consisting of fifteen low -rent raw ingredients, each disgusting in its own right; glace cherries, condensed milk, marshmallows, dessicated coconut-I cannot go on.



8. Big Macs. I have never had one at higher than blood temperature. Furthermore , I was too deeply affected by a distant Simpsons' episode in which the 'special sauce' was revealed as mayonnaise left out in the sun.



9. Chocolate paired with fruit, such as is found in boxes of Dairy Milk, sporting a sort of pip effect in its design, as if that would make any right-thinking person wilfully consume a Strawberry Cream. The most appalling example of this syndrome can be found in an orange Revel. I have never met anyone who likes orange Revels and let me tell you, there are more of them now than ever. The last time I went to a particularly murky cinema, I had to keep spitting them straight back out, like Tom Hanks in Big with the caviar.



10. Couscous. Firstly you have to add boiled water to it. Not on. Then you have to 'fluff' it with a fork. What? It's about as insubstantial as polystyrene beads as it goes down, so you forget you have eaten-worse than after a Chinese. Men never eat it-it is not considered masculine. I know one who flies into a teeth-grinding homophobic rage if it is mentioned on a menu.



Back to Nigella. It's not so much that she can cook; it's that she knows how to eat. Not just as can be regularly seen in her shows but because I agree with her snack philosophy. She once said she loved sweet and salty together, in the form of chocolate in one hand and salt and vinegar crisps in the other. Stick a glass of white wine in the middle and switch on Skinny Celebrities, confident you will never be emaciated enough to require a facelift.

'Change and decay in all around I see' or Abide with I

A girl like I is apolitical (a fancy way to describe ill-informed laziness) but I can't not comment on the recent tragedies in Norn Iron. A local newlywed was strangled in her honeymoon suite in Mauritius in January, having intercepted hotel staff stealing from her bedroom. The morning rush hour traffic was at a standstill for hours as the suicide attempt of a 31 year-old paraplegic was thwarted , on a bridge over one of the busiest roads in Europe. This woman was buried last monday, having returned to the exact same spot a fortnight and a day later, to fulfill her death wish. The road was re-opened just a couple of hours after the body was removed. You can see three or four bouquets attached to the railings as you whizz past, getting on with your life.

There was an interesting contrast in the media treatment of the two women in question; the details emerging from Mauritius were both sublime and ridiculous but always positively prurient. We know exactly why Michaela Harte went back to her room that day, salacious accounts of her struggle with her attackers have emerged and a great deal of information about her funeral was given, even her burial clothing. I repeat none of it here-it's unnecessary, of course, both because all can be rapidly revealed online and because much of it was none of most of our business anyway.

However, little is available to illuminate the case of Karen Cromie, the temporarily dissuaded suicide. There are obituaries available in various forms and a sparse account of her funeral. Here the discretion has been admirable and ironically, I find myself very interested to know more about this very unusual sequence of events. There is to be an 'inquiry into her aftercare' following the suicide attempt. Mental Health professionals may find themselves taken to task, in the coming months. Answers are required where, it seems now, ultimately none can be given. We will never know or understand how or why a person can arrive at this unimaginably desperate, hopeless, solitary desolation. That we must accept, if we can.

The same I cannot say, as regards the parents of the two children who commited suicide last week, in unrelated events ,and the teenager who collapsed playing rugby and later died. People at funerals have often panicked about what to say and I always bellow advice and often a possible mini-script. But sometimes there really are no words.

I shan't sleep now, shall I?

Hence I am sitting up banging out another review. The detox is going so well -I'm fitting loads of films in around talking about diets and planning exercise sessions , which I then miss due to an important episode of America's Next Top Model. I see Claudia Winkleman is back on too, on Film 2011, but she's idiotic. The guy on the show really knows his stuff, but his mother's not Eve Pollard and he doesn't have the glamour of a fringe stretching from ear to ear in a pompadour. Claudia loved Black Swan and yer man did not- I think I can see it from both angles.

Ballet films are tricky- they must have either proper dancers unknown to all but the initiated in the audience or stars like Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point, or Natalie Portman in this case. No-one was wanting a repeat of the frenzy of The Red Shoes, now were they? Thus you must expect a lot of lame shots of the necks and shoulders of a bankable star, or watch them nancying about in pale pink wrap cardigans, with their feet sticking out at right angles. Natalie Portman told Grazia magazine she was, at times, 'delirious' due to the training she had undergone but you still have to make an effort to overlook the knowledge that she couldn't possibly be really doing all that leppin' about en pointe. Still she had a lovely bun and had lost loads of weight; every little girl knows Ballet is as much about the look of the thing as the dancing. She was positively emaciated in this and really rather bendy. Therefore I would suggest you go to see on a full stomach, were it not for its content. It was gruesome.
So I'm afraid it has joined the ranks of those films forever remembered in my family for an unfortunate audience reaction-I leapt from my seat, recoiled in horror and exclaimed loudly, albeit involuntarily. Very feeble, compared to Uncle Gordon's prolonged and extremely audible gagging when a scarf was stuffed into Paul Newman's mouth in The Prize. My mother's best friend The Brick had a belter when Henry Fonda had his heart attack in On Golden Pond and Katherine Hepburn struggled with his pills. The Brick was so involved she leaned forward and yelled 'Under his tongue, put them under his tongue!'
Black Swan is not only horrific but is what my mother and The Brick call 'near the knuckle'. This means rude. I confess I had me scarf up to me face when the swan got herself involved with a very sexy lezzer rival. And that wasn't the worst of it , believe me. I checked this film's rating: 15, so be warned. You must also be advised regarding French actor, Vincent Cassel, he with an eye on either side of his face. How he attracted Monica Bellucci is beyond me. Anyway, he has a very showy role in this , as the Dance Director or something, so he gets quite a few snogs , silly accent notwithstanding. Barbara Hershey plays the possessive mother and somehow was the main catalyst for the horror of it all crossing over to high camp humour, which I feel, was not intentional. Honestly, I didn't know whether to heave or hoot.
It was at this point I realised that there is a tradition of actors winning great plaudits (Natalie Portman already has the Golden Globe) for good acting in bad films. You may remember Jessica Lange in Blue Sky or Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry. You don't? That's because the only twit who saw it after the Oscars was a girl like I, who feels that Black Swan will only be remembered for its central performance. Natalie was very, very good here-it was positively harrowing watching her tiny bosom heaving in torment over xylophone ribs. The film itself, however, was simply bally bonkers.

Reviews, as promised by I

My detox has reached an extreme stage. I have bought Christmas food items on sale, for the love of God. Lunch consists of Port and stilton topped off with Marc de Champagne truffles. I must be celebrating the end of Christmas as it was, like everyone else's, fraught with tension in the home. I do not know of a 'quiet' Christmas. Mine was straight from the set of Whatever happened to Baby Jane?, only each thought herself Joan Crawford and the other Bette Davis. I got my wish of living within a film, however the horror genre was not what I had in mind. It was shaping up to end like The Shining but settled down to an individual struggle against impossible obstacles, akin to The Shawshank Redemption.
Best thing for it is a bit of fluff such as Love and Other Drugs with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, distinguishable as one of the few romantic comedies in which you are not sure what's going to happen, that boy may not get girl.

The film is set in 1995 which allows for a few cheap Viagra jokes as Jake plays the part of a medical rep pushing it, when first it appeared. My interest in Viagra extends no further than wondering how so many emails offering it can end up in the inbox of a nice girl like I. Furthermore, Jake was on 'my list' (of famous men to run off with) until I saw the scenes in which he crept about in the nude, clutching a cushion to the, em, affected region. Well may he have the body of Michaelangelo's David ;I'm right off him now. I was already irritated by the women falling at his feet in the early scenes; later there appeared to be some sort of orgy. It was all very retro-sexist. The actor playing Jake's brother was too obviously cast just for laughs; improbably ugly, short, fat and charmless. The producers seemed to be channelling Carry On Anything fused with Roman Britain, with a touch of Pillow Talk chucked in.

About Anne : she had long dark curly hair, intended to suggest a bohemian nature and not King Billy, as I had to keep reminding myself. I say now that she is very likely to be Oscar nominated as (a) she played a sick person and (b) she didn't get one the last two times she was nominated. She was very good indeed in this-she may have thought she was in a different film altogether. Mind you she was also extremely nudey for a lot of it, really her and Jake's clothes pretty much fell off as soon as they clapped eyes on each other. Best have Bromide in your tea before you go to see it.

You can have propah Earl Grey, milk in first, before you see The King's Speech and you can be confident that the characters will remain fully dressed in delightful period costumes. (Of course no one will go with you if you say 'period drama'- I know someone who says 'I'd rather have my period' ) Anyhoo, I turned up keen to see Helena Bonham-Carter with the bad Queen Mother teeth, much commented on by Auntie Doris on the occasion of Charles' and Diana's wedding; 'Och, look, she has hardly a bar in the grate.' But no, false teeth would have inhibited her cut glass accent, as clipped and brisk as Celia Johnston in Brief Encounter. It made most of what she said very funny, the best example of which was when the overfamiliar australian Speech Therapist, unaware that she was the Duchess of York, told her to 'pop back another day and I'll take your details.' She replied quite witheringly, 'May husband and I nivah discuss owah pehsonal lives and we dewn't POP'

Guy Pierce did a great turn as Edward, Duke of Windsor, as did Timothy Spall as Churchill (he has clearly gone up in the world, after a long spell in the demi-monde) and it was so good to see Anthony Andrews-I have been quite worried since Brideshead. Colin Firth is likely to be nominated for an Oscar, for reasons very similar to those regarding Anne Hathaway , funny enough. He's come a long way since Bridget Jones, especially in the sense that he looks less uncomfortable these days. Have a look; when he's snogging Bridget, it's excruciating to watch. He's much better off with a period sort of peck on the cheek or that unmoving lip-pressing thing, exemplified in Brief Encounter. Lucky he's too old to have been considered for Love and Other Drugs, I am quite sure neither of us could have coped.

The new Barry Norman, that is I

I figure I will be needed after 10 breathless weeks of Claudia Winkleman on Film 2010 came to a sudden end. Besides you will be attending the cinema so much more during your detox. I mean, instead of your detox. You say to yourself; 'Self, you are a hog and a beast and must cleanse your system' (or other such terms which should be uttered by a posh plumber). You read several encouraging articles about oats, you learn how to pronounce 'quinoa' and you purchase some sort of leesurewear in the sales, in black, so that you will look thinner and sexier in your imaginary gym visits which have increased in your head to 5 times a week, at least.
 Then you decide you may as well just 'get rid' of all the unhealthy items in the kitchen prior to starting a blameless regime. This results in a dinner of teeny sausages wrapped in bacon, chips roasted in goosefat, accompanied by several unidentifiable dips and chutneys and followed by peaches in brandy and all the chocolates you left because you didn't like them when you had a full choice. Oh yes, you were cavalier and cocky on Christmas morning when you had most of a Selection Box for breakfast then considered your first drink of the day. Now you are desperately unwrapping orange creams and marzipans to eat alongside your quadruple Baileys-all that cream in it; it must go!
The next day, still queasy, you abandon all thoughts of depriving yourself, as you decide you are hovering on the brink of a dangerous depression, purely because you have had to get up in the dark and go back to work, where they haven't even had the decency to finish off the tin of Quality Street. People keep holding up all the blues and reds, demanding suspiciously 'What's this one?' then eating it anyway. You join in, consoling yourself with lame plans for storage in the empty tin and realise that your detox will simply mean you will be going to the pictures instead of the pub.
You must see The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. All the other actors are only in it because of them presumably-it can't have been the script-and you don't want to be left out. There is no other explanation and very little script anyway, just a lot of helpless staring at Angelina. The woman no longer looks human and minces about in cream pencil skirts and elbow length gloves, smirking, while purporting to be undercover. She meets Johnny who isn't wearing well, or may have had his face padded beneath an unflattering curly bob, all too reminiscent of one's own hairdo circa '95. They are chased by a few Brits who ought to have known better. Johnny overpowers one while handcuffed and Angelina rescues him in a speedboat and a very becoming hooded cloak. I always wear mine when I'm out and about on the Marina, spying and whatnot.
All this takes place in Venice and therein lies the explanation. Angelina and Brad must have fancied rocking about the Lido with the kids and having a few laughs of an evening with Johnny and Vanessa Paradis. I can see no other valid reason for choosing such a project. I can just picture them hoping the kids would get along. Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, I read, wants to be a boy. Best-looking little girl in the world and this is her dream, I kid you not. Hello magazine is always absolutely accurate and adored by the famous-they just repeat what the slebs say verbatim. This is why the questions are usually along the lines of 'Joan (Collins), what makes you so fabulous?'  Furthermore Hello had revealing photos of this wee person. I do hope a few playdates with Lily Rose Depp have discouraged Shiloh from running about in brogues and military jacket, insisting on being addressed as 'John'.